India ranks 87th on the WEF’s Global Gender Gap Report 2016

Posted on: 26 Oct 2016 15:22:14

26 October 2016 Current Affairs: India has been ranked 87th out of 144 countries on the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Global Gender Gap Report 2016. India has climbed 21 spots from 108th position in 2015.

The report measures gender gap as progress towards parity between men and women in four areas (i) Educational attainment, (ii) Health and survival, (iii) Economic opportunity and (iv) Political empowerment.

India related facts : In this edition India has overtaken China which is ranked 99th. The improvement in India’s ranking is driven largely by major improvements in education, where it has managed to close its gap entirely in primary and secondary education. In case of education attainment, India has made considerable strides moving up from 125th rank in 2015 to 113th in 2016.

On economic participation and opportunity too, India has moved up to 136th rank in 2016, from 139th in the year 2015. On health and survival, India has made little progress moving up by one place to 142nd rank compared to 141st in 2015. On political empowerment, India continues to be ranked 9th in the world. Overall Global Facts: The global march towards parity in key economic pillar has slowed down dramatically. This gap stands at 59% which is now larger than at any point since 2008. As a consequence, global economic gender gap will now not close until year 2186.

The gender gap in India has narrowed down. But India still remains one of the worst countries in the world for women in terms of labour force participation, income levels as well as health and survival. India has closed its gender gap by 2% in a year (2016), but much work remains to be done to empower women in the economic sphere. India continues to rank third-lowest in the world on Health and Survival, remaining the world’s least-improved country over the past decade.